Living Next Door to the God of Love

by Justina Robson

  I lost track. I became desire and pleasure under his mouth.

  “I want to be myself with you,” he said.

  The words took a long time making meaning in my head. “Why, who else is there?” I asked from my delirium.

  When he released my unresisting hands and kissed his way down my body I lost track of what pieces belonged to me and what to him. I forgot myself. Everything ran into a single centre of pleasure on the axis of his hands and mouth. I died. There was only bliss.

  When he got up to go to work he leant over me where I lay on the floor and kissed me with the breath from his nostrils. “Don’t go anywhere until I get back.” I thought I was awake, but maybe I was sleeping.

  His voice echoed through me, all the dissipated parts of me that had flowed like water around the rooms, carrying away my arms and legs to different locations where they must have been left, because I couldn’t find them. I wanted to tell him it was a ludicrous command, since I wouldn’t be going anywhere, but I had misplaced my mouth.

  Eventually, in spite of my longing to stay dissolved, I put myself back together and find I fit better than ever into my skin. Perhaps it’s metaphorical, but it feels as though it’s true. I’m not entirely sure. My mind is floating halfway between the physical and the imaginary.

  “You look more like me,” I say, as I inspect the results in the bathroom mirror. “And what happened to your hair?”

  I don’t know what happened to my hair. It was always amber, which is a posh way of saying it was dark dishwater blond going slightly red. Now it has bright platinum streaks and, underneath and behind my ears, thick black bands like the gaps in Saturn’s rings.

  I found my hair lying on top of the green leather-bound edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, I seem to recall. Now I wonder if I made a mistake and picked up some other girl’s hair. But even if it is the wrong hair, it’s grown into my head now. I bring forward a black piece and look at it. This is Jalaeka’s hair, I realize, finer than mine. Well, it beats a hickey any day.

  I pull it and wonder if it’s hurting on his head now.

  After I bathe and dress I decide to make reparations. I go through to Greg’s kitchen and cook a late dinner. When he comes in he looks surprised to be greeted by a plate of spaghetti Bolognese, but not that surprised, because it’s one of only three dishes that I know.

  “You’re looking well,” he said, tired and accepting of any kind thing at this stage of the night, even a kiss on the cheek from a truant student. “Did you do something to your hair?”

  We share a pleasant evening. I help him to make up his records on the Palace and we plan out our joint assault on those remaining rooms of the ground floor that are still undocumented. He gives me the prospectus for next year’s applicants at the University and explains what kind of things I need to compose in order to fulfil the daunting demands it makes: Outline Your Interest in Unity Studies (“My boyfriend is an alien” will not do apparently), Give a Brief Summary of Your Recent Achievements (I have cooked edible food, I have held down a cleaning job, I have agreed with Dr. Saxton’s theory that the taiga is a representation of the conditions of the generation of early human consciousness and also exists as a metaphor for the tangled nature of the unconscious mind and the incoherent aspects of self-generation, I have learned how to give a blow job—none of these will do either, apart from the cleaning).

  I go back to mine in time to sweep out the fireplace and set on more logs. I then prepare to disassemble myself on the rug, which will be the only warm spot in the room until later. I keep my arms and hands attached so I can turn the pages of the books as I read.

  13 / Valkyrie: Sankhara

  Valkyrie stood up on the top of the SankhaGuide Massif and looked down across Greater Sankhara and the lands beyond it. In her hand she held several paper flyers which had been foisted on her by individuals down in the streets, before she took to the skies. She opened her fingers and watched them flutter away into the wind: a pink one with lilac hearts on it, from the Love Foundation, promising to heal Sankhara through healing her inner loneliness; a blue one with a pentagram on it offering Wiccan retreats at “the extent of the known world,” including a guided meditation into the depths of “our common soul”; a green and grubby one proclaiming the imminent arrival of the Justified Ancients of Muu Muu and exhorting her to preserve Sankhara’s pure human encounter with chaos by not keeping a dream diary.

  SankhaGuide itself didn’t say anything except that leaflet day was on Satyrday and strictly limited to the beachfront and the Temple District. Temple lay to her right, complete with its new cathedral, which she had gone to inspect that morning. It was gothic and black and almost entirely dwarfed by both the huge rocky bulk of SankhaGuide Massif and the twisting, half-alive towers of the Aelf, in whose shadow it stood at this time of the afternoon.

  The sky was auburn with a coming storm. The wind had risen from the east and the sea was almost black as the sun went down. In the last, long and clear light, the shadows and light-sprites of the Aelf towers moved independently of the trees, stone and glass that cast them. Valkyrie looked at them with a sceptic’s fascination. They made shapes that vaguely reminded her of animals, like a hand-shadow play, but no animals she cared to see for real. They shimmered between the two high points of the towers and TacMassif’s radio spike, clustering around the most exclusive of all the city’s districts, Kodiak Aerial.

  Light shone through the old cable cars that were suspended on the wire there, and through their lenses it became the eyes of a beast that stared back at Valkyrie. Few people could live there, but Valkyrie was one of them. She opened her wings and jetted across to the car that had recently become her one-room house. At the last minute she folded her arms across her chest and furled her wings to drop vertically in through the roof doorway and land on the mat below. The car swung and rattled gently.

  Valkyrie made a tea for herself and reviewed all the articles and news that SankhaGuide had been able to find for her concerning Theodore and his past on Earth. There was precious little, and it amounted to nothing new. She doubted that any useful information would come out of the public domain, though she had higher hopes of finding some by the more usual spying methods. She checked the time, finished the drink and sat down in the darkness, looking at the city light up beneath her. Closing her eyes she allowed herself to detach from that world and make the connection inside to the Forged dream net.

  In Uluru the avatar Metatron rose from the parkland grass, green, his wings leafy. He walked with her past the silver aeroplane, and prompted her, “Can I get you anyone?”

  “I want to see Elinor.”

  Metatron paused and half turned towards her. “I thought we had agreed there would be no more visits. You want to save her.”

  “I need to see her.”

  “The data that comprises the last full build of Elinor is unstable,” Metatron reminded her like a lecturing father. “The more often you interact with the routine, the worse it is going to get. It is already over fifty percent decayed.”

  “It’s not like I’m killing her or anything,” Valkyrie said sharply to him, against the jolt of pain in her own heart.

  Metatron sighed. “The price . . .”

  “I’ll pay anything.” She watched the avatar consider her offer.

  “Very Faustian,” he said. “Fortunately, although I archive Forged neural prints, I am not a collector. You will have to pay for the copying error damage. The Dead Archive doesn’t run on charity and you can’t afford what it would cost to keep multiple copies. Come on, Valkyrie, it would do you good to leave her as a treasured memory and meet the living, don’t you think?”

  Valkyrie felt her insides harden to the strength of armour. “Just bring her here.”

  Metatron returned a moment later and with him came a ghostly figure, another Light Angel Valkyrie. Where Skuld’s armour was golden this one wore silver and blue and its wings were the feathered kind, not the aerofoils that Skuld bore. Valkyrie felt hersel
f tip over into joy as she recognized her friend’s dear face, very different from her own, as it smiled at her.

  Valkyrie changed instantly into Little Girl Skuld in her tartan dress. Elinor switched to avatar shape, a gangling child in blue jeans and a green hoodie, ever the more tomboyish of the two. Her black pigtails stuck out at uneven heights because they were so recklessly made. But where Skuld’s colours were strong and definite, Elinor was a pale wash of nearly nothing. Her expressions had no transitions—they flickered from smile to sombre.

  “Elly?” Skuld said and ran forward. Her hands almost caught Elinor’s hands, but the dead woman was too insubstantial, even in Uluru. It was like touching spider silk.

  “Skuld,” Elinor said dreamily. “I’ve been a long time.”

  “I need to ask you some questions,” Valkyrie said gently. “Can you hear me?”

  “Far away,” Elinor said. Her face switched to a smile. “I died. I remember. But that was just now. Are you dead?”

  “No.” Valkyrie forced herself not to waste time, since every interaction counted. “Elly, you once did a job that involved Theodore, do you remember?”

  “The Unity Agent,” Elinor said. “Is he here too?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I didn’t like him.”

  “Me neither. Listen, do you remember what that job was about?”

  “Belshazzar thought Theo was running other agents on Earth.” Elinor stared around her, dreamily. “Is this the park? Is that the aeroplane? Is that you, Skuld? I can’t see you.”

  “And was he? Honey, look at me, was he?” Valkyrie stared into Elinor’s misty eyes. She could see entire blocks of pixels all identical in there, simple flat zones of emptiness.

  “I think so,” Elinor said. “Is that you, Skuld? I can’t see you very well.”

  “It’s me. It’s me, honey. Now just one more thing. Did you get any proof? Do you know who they are?”

  “Can’t tell,” Elinor whispered. “Don’t know. I thought I saw one but then, I forgot it. Bel said he did something to our minds. Can’t be seen, won’t be seen. Deep hiding. A woman in a talking coat. She . . .” The whole of Elinor’s small body winked out of existence, returned, failed again.

  “Elly!” Valkyrie cried out.

  Metatron appeared at her right side. “That archive has reached the limit of my capacity to run it. If you try to speak with her again, you will destroy her. And your account is empty.”

  Valkyrie jerked her arm out of his grip, returning to her Earthly actual form of the armoured flying woman, her true self. “I can see that. Get me out of here.”

  “As you wish.”

  Alone in her cable car home Valkyrie hugged her knees to her chest and let the wind rock her back and forth, back and forth. She would not cry.

  A short while later, after the moon had risen, a knock came at the door.

  Crossly she unfolded and thumped the access panel controls. The roof hatch opened, shut, then the side door slid back. An Elf was standing there. An actual Elf from the Aelf, Valkyrie decided after a few moments of incomprehension. A Stuffie.

  He was quite tall and willowy, dressed in forest colours, with brown hair that was part braided and part not. He stood on the narrow platform before her door without any concern for the serious open drop behind him and said brightly, “Hi. I couldn’t help noticing that you’re new, and I thought you might be interested in some of the latest magical protection from the worst of Sankhara’s nasty night-time haunts. Although”—he stood back and openly stared her up and down before giving her a grin—“I can see you’re the kind of woman who doesn’t need that kind of help most of the time.”

  His expression was so cheeky and so infectious that Valkyrie found herself beginning to smile. She had an idea. “Come in,” she said. “And show me what you’ve got.”

  His grin deepened. He skipped across the threshold and took his bag off, dropping it on the floor. “Junk,” he said of it, peering around him with unbridled curiosity. “Gee it’s so, I don’t know, so stark in here. You from Earth recently?”

  “Good guess.”

  “I don’t guess,” he said. “I know.” He shivered. “I could get you some nice rugs, good fabrics, great curtains. It’s really—it’s like standing in an old, creaky, freezing cable car with no furnishings and no heat. Prison camp chic. But maybe you want it to stay that way? Are you punishing yourself for something, cause I can find you a good priest, or is it a secret religious fetish? Is that a real gun?”

  “Yes.” Valkyrie picked up her sidearm and showed him how it attached, took it off and put it away carefully.

  “And rocket packs and wings. That is so cool!” He was almost beside himself with excitement. “Seriously. I know where the cheapest fuel is and I can get you upgrade packs and I can even get ammo for that skull-popper . . .”

  “I’m the Light Angel Valkyrie Skuld,” Valkyrie said quietly, holding out her armoured hand.

  “Damien.” He took her offered shake and ran his other hand over the metal armour on her forearm and her gun ports.

  Valkyrie read his biosigns, his hand-prints and his vocal range and identified him. An Engine adept. Usually they were much less conspicuous characters. But this was useful . . . “You’re very forward,” she said, squeezing harder.

  He let go with alacrity but showed no signs of dismay. “People say that. So, what’s new on Earth then? What made you come here to the Aerial to get all self-hatey? Who’s in that picture? It’s not you. Is that your sister?” He turned rapidly to catch Valkyrie’s reaction.

  “No,” she said and took the small photograph of Elinor out of his hands, replacing it beside her sleeping roll. “Now answer me a question. What would it cost me for you to come here every evening and tell me all about what you saw in the daytime around these very interesting shops and salesmen you must know?”

  “Data? News? Gossip?” He was almost beside himself. “That’s what I do best. Easy rates. Let’s start with, say, fifty credits.”

  “Oh come on, you’ll just make it up for that. Twenty.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. Forty-five, and I promise I won’t invent a thing.”

  “Twenty-five, and you make sure to pay attention to certain things more than others.”

  “Forty, and I won’t tell anyone you’re a spy.”

  “Thirty, and I won’t dump your cold, dead, bullet-riddled body in the sea.”

  “Cool. Thirty it is. Can I start now or would tomorrow be better? Do you have peppermint tea? I so love that.” He gazed at her with clear, green eyes, then glanced up at her ceiling. “Nice horse bone charms. I guess the landlady left them for you. She’s a real good friend of mine. I’ll give you three credit points for them.”

  Valkyrie handed him a cup of her tea.

  “Redbush,” he said, sniffing it and taking a sip. “Good. Have you ever been to Africa? I wish I could go there.”

  “About your thirty credits,” Valkyrie said. “Will that be in kind?”

  “Oh no, I’m strictly legit.” He showed her the back of his left hand, where his Tab lay under his skin, and he opened the same hand and showed her the smooth silver lines of an Abacand Direct connection. He was better wired than most government ops.

  Valkyrie picked up his account codes and paid him from the department slush fund. “Now,” she said, sitting down. “Tell me everything new over the last couple of weeks.”

  “Since Metropolis got axed by that loser, you mean,” Damien said, collapsing into a cross-legged bundle of energy and exquisite prettiness on top of her sleeping roll. “What the hell was that all about? Anyway . . .”

  Damien told Valkyrie about the Cathedral of Cadenza Piacere, which she had already seen, although she didn’t know it was sacred to Stuffies and Damien himself wasn’t sure. He said that the truth of it was still being revealed. He was massively over-excited because the Engine had never built anything for a Stuffie before. That was a change that permitted reflexivity . . . he prattled on with t
erms she didn’t understand. And then he said there was some rumour about a club downtown—“Some new guy there, or maybe it’s a woman, I’m not sure. You want me to check that personally? It’s really expensive and I’d need new clothes, plus hair, plus bribery money and the rest. Say, a couple of hundred credits would do it.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Valkyrie said. She felt wearied by his garrulous diversions. “Come back tomorrow and ask me again.”

  “Okay!” He sprang up and swept his bag onto his shoulder, flicking her horse bone charms with his fingers as he passed. “See you same time. Don’t get up, I can let myself out.” He thumped the control panel, much as she had done, and vanished into the night leaving a trace of woody forest smell behind him.

  A smooth, soft quiet replaced him. Valkyrie watched him walk nonchalantly across the long support wire that linked Kodiak with Aelf 2 and closed her eyes.

  A few days later, still uncertain about the wisdom of giving a confidence guy like Damien a big chunk of money, she sat drinking espresso in the fan-vaulted splendour of Aelf 1’s public foyer and saw an unusual Forged come to the counter of the refreshments stand and order tea. He was a Salmagundi, and presented the appearance of a human who was halfway into changing into another animal: furred, whiskered, doe-eyed and with Anubis’s black-tipped jackal’s ears. He had a tail banded with golden Tek, and he glanced at her as he collected his drink, then held out a paper flyer to her, casually. Clearly it wasn’t something he was selling.

  Valkyrie took it—harmless rice paper—and saw that it was for one of the clubs on Pythagoras’s Circle.

  “I heard you broke something and were looking for the pieces,” he said, smiling and revealing his long, sharp teeth. “Bob Clovitz,” he said, holding out his paw—or his hand. “Solar Security. We bite what you discover. I’ve been here ever since Metropolis. Saw you the other day, figured you were the one Queen B’s sent to help. This is my whole angle, by the way: one crappy bit of paper and some underground bullshit about the grace of god. I thought we might succeed better together.” He showed her his badge via the Uluru comms band, and she verified it.